by DANIEL WHITCOMB

So here you are, a new level 80 Death Knight. You’ve made your triumphant return to Ebon Hold to train your level 80 skills and hearthed back to Dalaran, and now you’re hanging out in front of the bank on your favorite mount. And you have no idea what to do next. No worries, here’s a list of goals that should answer that eternal question (eternal in this case being the time to the next expansion), “I’m level 80. Now What?”


Choose Your Weapon

Once you’ve hit 80, as a 2-handed weapon wielder, there’s 3 major weapons you want to start shooting for. Here’s a look at those three choices and the pros and cons. 

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by MATTHEW ROSSI

The Obsidian Sanctum

Also called Sarth or Sartharion for the boss within, this raid is similar to Gruul or Magtheridon (or Onyxia, if you’ve been raiding that long) in that it is a short raid with a single boss encounter. (Technically, Gruul’s had two, High King Maulgar and his council and then Gruul himself, but it was still a short raid along these lines.) Unlike those pervious raids, however, the Obsidian Sanctum has a built-in ‘hard mode’ of sorts, as the three sub-boss drakes Shadron, Tenebron and Vesperon can be killed before engaging Sartharion himself or left alive and dealt with while engaging him for better loot and a chance at a mount. This also leads to one of the hardest boss fights in the current game being 10 man Sartharion with three drakes up. (I’ve only killed him on normal difficulty with one drake up and that wasn’t easy, so when we get around to leaving all three up I expect to get thrashed fairly often.)

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by ZACH YONZON

The vault is a raid instance accessible only to members of the faction that control Wintergrasp. It is one of the more important reasons why control of Wintergrasp is so important. Archavon the Stone Watcher is an extremely easy raid boss who drops pieces of Tier 7 and Arena gear. In short, he means free epics.

While there are no level restrictions to entering Wintergrasp (though if you can’t fly you’ll either have to take the portal or be summoned), players must be Level 80 and in a raid group in order to enter the Vault of Archavon raid instance. It’s a very short raid with exactly four trash mobs who have special abilities, but are essentially tank and spank and prepare the raid for how the boss will be like. Archavon is a DPS race.


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by CHRISTIAN BELT

Chilly Slobberknocker

Is your Mage still working their way to level 80? If so, this is an easy choice. Once your Mage has reached level 75, you can take them toZul’drak and head directly for the Amphitheater of Anguish. This is the Northrend equivalent of Nagrand’s Ring of Blood questline, in that it’s a series of 5-man boss fights that grants a ridiculous amount of gold, potions, and experience, and ends with a pretty fantastic selection of blue weaponry as a final reward. The Mage choice is the Chilly Slobberknocker, and it it’s a great gift for any mid-level spell-slinger on your list. This will be an instant upgrade for almost any Mage at the level, and there isn’t a valid replacement until you begin to get access to level 80 instance drops. 
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by DANIEL WHITCOMB

As a reminder, defense skill is not the same as defense rating. Rather, you need defense rating to get defense skill. Specifically, you will need approximately 690 defense rating to gain the 540 defense skill you need to gain critical strike immunity against level 83 mobs.

Helm

Questing in Storm Peaks, you should stumble upon the Crown of the Hyldnir in the middle of the massive quest line started by They Took Our Men at K3. While 37 defense rating seems a little low, the helm does have a handy yellow gem slot, perfect for a Thick Autumn’s Glow or a Thick Sun Crystal, bumping up that defense rating by a handy amount. 

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by JENNIE LEES

A quick word about trash. Several of the packs leading up to Razuvious, and between Gothik and the Horsemen contain Dark Touched Warriors. These pleasant chaps whirlwind a lot, which means if you’re melee you’ll likely be picking yourself up off the floor multiple times unless you get out of their way (or stun them). There are also axes between Razuvious and Gothik which whirlwind, swords that cleave and staves that AoE, so all in all, this isn’t a great set of trash to get close to.


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by ZACH YONZON

With blue, or rare, gear easily attainable through several sources, it should be extremely easy to gear up in preparation for ten- or even twenty-five man raids. 

Of course, before we get all our gear, we have to have a clear idea of what we want from them considering Blizzard has seen fit to load some Plate with Haste and others with Crit. Protection Paladins have no problem because as soon as you see a Defense value, we’ll know it’s meant for us. Holy and Retribution don’t have it as easy, and must often choose between Crit and Haste. Don’t worry about Tier 7 and other raid epics — they’re loaded with both. There are benefits to both, so we’ll examine those are after the break.
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by AMANDA MILLER

There are faction recipes and dropped recipes, as well as highlights from your trainer that you won’t want to miss. Here is a quick summary:

• New and improved exclusive spellthreads for enchanting your pants.
• A 20-slot bag and a 22-slot bag.
• A slow flying carpet mount as well as an epic one.
• Specialty cloth for epic gear.
• Frost resistance gear.
• An 8-piece PvP pseudo-set.
• Exclusive cloak enchants.
• Special threads that you can sell for a profit.
• Soul shard and enchanting bags with 32 slots.

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by DANIEL WHITCOMB

I’d like to take a look this week at some of the heroic 5-man loot. If there’s one thing I personally noticed right away when researching said loot, it’s that there’s a marked lack of hit rating. In recognition of that, I have often included some choices for each slot that are technically slightly worse than others except for a good amount of hit rating. In the end, to get to that magic 9% hit rating cap for raid bosses (Although some claim the new cap is somewhere around 8.1%), you’ll need about 296 hit rating. To do that, you may end up needing to take both some of the loot from here and from last week’s normal dungeon guide, and top it off with some choiceenchantments and gems, but it’s certainly doable.

But now, without further ado, let’s see what heroics get you in Wrath of the Lich King.

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